


Pour quelle raison

by xslytherclawx



Series: ô saisons, ô châteaux (ravenclaw au) [11]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anti-Muggle Content, Fantastic Racism, Friendship, Gay Male Character, LGBT Character, M/M, Marauders Era (Harry Potter), Secret Crush, Unrequited Crush, unlearning prejudices
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-14
Updated: 2020-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:01:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23145832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xslytherclawx/pseuds/xslytherclawx
Summary: The problem is that Gus knows immediately what the problem is.He doesn't think his parents would approve of him being gay in the first place, at least if they knew, but – a Mudblood is out of the question.
Relationships: Mary Macdonald & Augustus Selwyn (OC), Nigel Gallagher (OC)/Augustus Selwyn (OC)
Series: ô saisons, ô châteaux (ravenclaw au) [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1110843
Comments: 11
Kudos: 33
Collections: ravenclaw au (xslytherclawx & thestias's harry potter multiverse), xslytherclawx & thestias's harry potter multiverse





	Pour quelle raison

**Author's Note:**

>   
> _Je ne veux surtout pas qu’on sache que je m’intéresse à lui. Car je ne veux pas surtout pas qu’on se demande_ pour quelle raison _je m’interesserais à lui._  
>  _Parce que se poser cette question ne ferait qu’alimenter la rumeur qui court à mon sujet. On prétend que je « préfère les garçons ». On constate que j’ai des gestes de fille parfois. … Et j’aime les livres, je lis beaucoup, on me voit souvent sortant de la bibliothèque du lycée, un roman entre les mains. Et on ne me connaît aucune petite amie. Cela suffit pour bâtir une réputation. J’ajoute que l’insulte fuse régulièrement … et je m’emploie à l’ignorer absolument, à ne jamais y répondre, à manifester en retour la plus parfaite indifférence, comme si je n’avais pas entendu (comme s’il était possible que je n’entende pas !). Ce que aggrave mon cas: un hétérosexuel pur et dur ne laisserait jamais dire ce genre de choses, il démentirait avec véhémence, il casserait la gueule à l’émetteur de l’insulte. Laisser dire, c’est confirmer._
> 
> _Évidement, je « préfère les garçons »._  
>  _Mais je ne suis pas encore capable de prononcer cette phrase._  
>  \- Philippe Besson, _« Arrête avec tes mensonges »_ , 2017
> 
> * * *
> 
> this isn't quite the update I wanted to share this week, but! it's gus!
> 
> this takes place during [La Plus parfaite indifférence](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18530875/chapters/43920220)

The problem is that Gus knows immediately what the problem is. And the worst part is that Gallagher is a Mudblood. Not that he thinks his parents would approve of him being  _ gay _ in the first place, at least if they knew, but – a Mudblood is out of the question.

And a Gryffindor, no less.

He doesn’t do anything at first. He spends a lot of time watching Regulus Black flirt with his Half-Blood housemates. He wonders if Regulus even knows what he’s doing, or if he just doesn’t care. It doesn’t matter, in the end. Because Gus isn’t Regulus.

Gus tries to navigate in life by keeping his head down and blending in (with the obvious exception of Quidditch), and his ridiculous unrequited crush on a Mudblood is in no way a deviation from that norm. If, while playing against Gryffindor, he finds himself distracted by a certain Beater’s strong, muscular arms, well – he’s not about to act on it. He’s not an idiot.

* * *

Eventually, it becomes nearly too much to bear. It all comes to a head in double Potions one Thursday. None of the Slytherins want to work with him, and while he’s used to floating around until everyone else is paired up, today, Macdonald is out, and Gus finds himself working with Gallagher.

The worst thing isn’t how he can barely keep from staring, or how paranoid he is that Crouch or Wilkes will see – no, the worst thing is that Gallagher treats him with barely restrained contempt, as if Gus is the root of all his problems.

Gus can only take so much of this (it turns out to be about twenty minutes’ worth) before he snaps, “What is your  _ problem?” _

“Like you don’t know.”

“Evidently I  _ don’t _ know,” Gus says.

“We’re only working together because  _ your _ friends put  _ my _ friend in the hospital wing.”

“What?” Gus is pretty sure he doesn’t have any  _ friends. _

“Mary Macdonald?” he says.

He’s only heard whispers about what happened to Mary Macdonald; no one rumoured to be involved would trust him with the details, and he doesn’t want to know.  _ “Not _ my friends,” Gus says.

“Oh, like you pureblood Slytherin pricks aren’t all exactly the same. You probably think it’s fucking hilarious what they’ve done.”

“I don’t know  _ what _ they’ve done, and I don’t appreciate being blamed for it.”

Gallagher rolls his eyes. “Like I believe that. As nice as you might pretend to be – you’re every bit as racist as the rest of them. As if you don’t call me a Mudblood behind my back, or think that you’re better than me just because you came from a family of inbred racists.”

Gus doesn’t try again.

* * *

He approaches his sister in the common room that evening. Aurelia is sitting with her friends, all of the most popular and coolest (in every sense of the word) seventh-year girls.

“Baby brother!” she greets warmly – and he is the only person she  _ ever _ treats warmly – pulling him in for a kiss on the forehead and a hug. Aurelia has always coddled him, and as a true Slytherin, he intends on using that to his advantage now. “How are you?”

“Slughorn forced me to work with some Mudblood in Potions today.”

As he expected, this makes Aurelia and her friends burst out in a series of protests. After everyone’s had their say about how cruel it is to force a Pureblood (and a Slytherin! A Selwyn! One of the Sacred Twenty-Eight!) to work with some filthy Mudblood, Aurelia asks him why.

He shrugs. “Apparently Mulciber did something – or tried to do something – to one of the Mudblood Gryffindor girls in my year.”

To his complete surprise, Aurelia and several of her friends wince, recoil, and one of them looks visibly ill. He feels ill himself. If it’s this bad that his sister and her friends are reacting in such a way, he can only imagine what Mulciber did.

“Listen to me, Augustus,” Aurelia says in her most authoritative tone. She’s using his proper name, so he knows it must be deadly serious. “It is perfectly all right to assert our dominance over Mudbloods and to show them their proper place, but – some things are just inhuman.”

Their older brother, Amulius, is a devoted follower of the Dark Lord, and while Aurelia is no fanatic, she isn’t a Muggle-lover by far.

“What… what did he do?”

Aurelia, to her credit, pulls him close and whispers in his ear just what Mulciber actually did, and what he’d tried to do but had been stopped from doing.

Gus feels sick.

* * *

He isn’t sure what possesses him to approach Mary Macdonald after Herbology, a week later. He doubts she even really knows who he is, but his Slytherin robes must give enough away for her to glare at him.

“What do  _ you _ want?”

“I – I wanted to apologise.”

_ “Apologise?” _

“Yes,” Gus says. “What – what Mulciber did was unacceptable. I wasn’t involved in any way. I – I don’t think there’s anything I can say or do to make things right, but… but I’d like to try.”

She narrows her eyes. “And how would you do that?”

“I don’t know.”

“Has this got anything to do with Nigel?”

Gus is a Slytherin and a Selwyn, and though he wasn’t raised in the cold, calculating (abusive, really) Houses of Black or Malfoy or Rosier, he was raised to know not to react to such accusations. So he doesn’t. “It’s to do with the fact that some things are just inhuman,” he says, using his sister’s words. He’s sure she wouldn’t be pleased, but she has a point.

“And you’re an arbiter of humanity, then?” Macdonald asks.

“No. Of course not. But I’m not – and I’ve never been – as bad as Crouch or his gang, and I’m not – I’m not  _ one _ of them.”

“Better not let them hear you say that.”

Gus very nearly loses his composure. “Crouch has been targeting me since first year. Besides Black or Goldstein, I’m quite certain I’m his favourite target. And I’m a much easier one, as I have to sleep in the same dormitory as he does.”

“If you’re trying to make me sympathise with you, it won’t work.”

“I’m not,” Gus says. “I’m telling you that I know how awful it is to be targeted for something you’ve no control over, and some things are – every Slytherin girl I know agreed with me that some things are inhuman. Including Flavia Greengrass, and  _ she’s _ spent the past seven years harassing M– students like you.”

Macdonald fixes him with a hard look. “What do you know about being targeted over something you’ve no control over? We’re not discussing appearance or making the Quidditch team, here.”

There’s no one else around, but still, Gus doesn’t know why he says it. “I’m gay.”

Macdonald doesn’t reply immediately. Her eyes widen and her mouth drops open just a little bit, but she quickly corrects herself. After a moment: “Wizards aren’t nearly as backwards about that as – as you’re trying to make me believe.”

He doesn’t question her near-slip. “Some of them, maybe, but Crouch – if I were heterosexual, Crouch would leave me alone. And then there’s the issue of my family. They’re not – they're really not as terrible as some, but… they’d still want me to marry a witch and have a family first, and I don’t think I can do that. So I know – maybe not all of it, but I know how it feels to be targeted over something you’ve no control over.”

“And you expect me to believe this makes you less of a racist?”

“No,” Gus says honestly. “I don’t. But I – I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t apologise. And if there’s anything at all I can do to start to make things right, I’d like to know. I’d like to do it.”

“You have no idea what it’s like to be a Muggleborn at this school,” Macdonald says.

“So help me understand.”

“That’s not my responsibility.”

“It’s not,” he agrees. 

Macdonald crosses and uncrosses her arms. “Why don’t you take a Muggle Studies class if you’re so sympathetic?”

“All right,” he agrees, even though he knows it’s social suicide. “Burbage is the Muggle Studies professor, isn’t she? I’ll ask her.”

* * *

He’s not quite sure why, but Professor Burbage agrees to tutor him during his free period. She assigns him books to read (which he disguises and further protects with jinxes and hexes, because Crouch knows no boundaries, but he’ll back off if he’s hexed). It would be too easy to lie; to pretend that he’s doing the work when he’s not.

But for some reason he can’t quite sort out, he doesn’t think he can do that.

It’s not that he’s a bad liar (he’s quite an excellent liar, if he’s honest; he’s not a Slytherin for nothing). It’s not that he really thinks Mudbloods are as good as he is.

It’s more to do with the fact that the people who torment him on a daily basis  _ also _ torment Mudbloods.

And that the torment some of his fellow Purebloods (because much as Sirius Black and his ilk would like to claim, the divide is not so neatly along House lines) inflict upon Mudbloods is something no one should subject even the most vile creature to. His sister has a point; some things are just inhuman.

So he does the reading. He attends his lessons. And he continues being friendly and polite to Macdonald, though he’s careful not to so much as glance at Gallagher.

And, eventually, toward the end of term, Macdonald slips a book into his bag. A novel. A Muggle novel, cleverly hidden.

It’s a peace offering. He knows that much.

So he returns the favour with one of his own favourite novels;  _ Black As Night: _ Cassius Warbeck’s first.

**Author's Note:**

> we'll have another Gus instalment up wednesday if all goes according to plan, and year six will start a week from today!  
> in the meantime, the [year five survey](https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/8X7L5Y7) is still open!


End file.
